


the way the world ends

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, F/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The earth is a dying thing under their feet.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Natasha and Bucky make their way through the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way the world ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little drabble-y fic, heavily inspired by _The Road_ and the idea of a nature-based apocalypse. Many thanks to katertots for looking it over and being awesome and encouraging.

Natasha wants to remember nothing. Instead, she remembers everything. She remembers the last time she woke up in her apartment, and her last cup of coffee. She remembers the day the ground shuddered and the sun flared – a stifling heat followed by a wasting freeze. She remembers the last time she saw Steve and Clint, Sam and Fury, before they had been torn away by chaos and fire. She remembers the searing pain of being separated from everything she had known.

The woods are empty and gray. The ashen trees around them have shed their leaves; the empty boughs fall to the ground with deafening _crack-thump_ s. They go days without seeing an animal, or hearing a single birdsong. The earth is a dying thing under their feet.

There are other people in the woods, but James and Natasha avoid them, taking cover in the decaying underbrush. At first, all they see are hungry wanderers – men and women and children, the very young and the very old. But time changes that, and then the only others in the woods are the grizzled, stringy, violent men who desperation and deprivation has turned into monsters. Even weakened with hunger, none of them individually would be a match for the two of them together, but whenever Natasha moves to take a defensive stance, James takes her by the wrist and leads her away.

Natasha walks behind James, or in front of him. She never walks beside him. She is afraid to see his face, afraid to let him see hers. They walk in silence.

 

\--

 

The nights are cold and dark. They huddle around dry, crackling fires, covered in blankets they’ve stolen from vacant houses. The houses themselves are nearly always the tombs of their former tenants, and neither of them can bear to sleep amongst the dead. So they make their beds on prickly cushions of pine needles, under a sulfurous, black sky. Sometimes, in the dark and cold, the clouds shift and part just long enough to see the glimmer of a few distant stars. Natasha tells James to wake her when that happens, and he does. 

They stare together. Natasha tries to let the perspective wash over her – that there are worlds beyond them, that their suffering is only a small thing inside the magnitude of the universe. And then the clouds move again, and everything goes dim.

 

\--

 

She wonders what she thought her life would be like. Would she have married? Had children? Grown old? The idea feels preposterous, selfish, and fills her with an indescribable longing. She dreams about it – watching her red hair turn white, feeling her joints knotted with arthritis. 

She wonders what James dreams about, but then she supposes she knows. Sometimes she wakes with him curled around her back. His arm lies heavy over her hip, she can feel his chest rise and fall against her back. She can feel the soft bulge of his cock against the back of her thigh. 

Some nights, he wakes himself up with a jerk and a muffled whimper, and lies behind her, quiet and awake. 

“Where are we going?” she asks. She is the nervous child she was when she first met him, when he had been terrifying and she had been so concerned with impressing him.

“Don’t know,” he says.

“Will we see any of them again?” she asks.

“Maybe,” he says, “on the road.”

 

\--

 

Natasha thinks she feels the seasons change. It’s hard to tell – the sky above them stays slate gray and their breath still fogs in front of their faces. But she thinks she feels something change in the air, slight dips and rises in temperature.

The fragile silver arrow around her neck turns into a millstone. On a bridge over a dried riverbed, she unclasps it, clenches it in her palm, and lets it fall over the edge. Dull light glints off its surfaces as it tumbles down. Clint is gone from her, and she is gone from him, and whatever promises were there are gone, too.

 

\--

 

They see death everywhere. They stumble into it – bodies that are mutilated and destroyed, skinned to the bone. Bodies with self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Bodies hung by the neck from rafters or tree branches. They see rot – birds that drop from the sky, fruit that has withered on the vine, the putrefied remains of animals that could not sustain this altered landscape. 

They see themselves decay, too. Skin that was pink becomes stained with dirt. James’ beard grows long and unkempt. Their nail beds are lined with sooty grime. Their muscles atrophy. Their empty bellies groan.

Natasha has never believed in God. She wonders if Bucky ever did. She wonders if Steve still does. She wonders if he has survived.

 

\--

 

They stay clear of the cities, winding their way through barren roads and backwater towns. They find an empty barbershop in one – with cracked windows and rotating chairs already covered in soft dust. In a back office, they find a half-eaten bag of potato chips, two granola bars and an unopened soda can. 

The light fades. James spreads their blankets on the linoleum floor, pulls shades down over the windows, and starts a fire in a trashcan. Natasha lies down flat, letting the hard floor stretch her spine in a way the spongy sod can’t. 

She watches as he finds a pair of scissors, dusts off a mirror and snips off great hunks of his beard until at last most of it lies on the floor. What is left on his cheeks and chin is patchy, but shorter and manageable. Natasha tells herself she’ll even it out in the morning. His hair is next, and with his fingers as a guide, it turns out better. If she squints in the dim light, and if she only looks at him from behind, she could almost imagine that he’s just the same. 

James eases himself onto the floor, laying himself out alongside her. He doesn’t say anything, but he covers her body with his, pressing one hand – cool metal – to her waist, and the other – warm flesh – against the side of her face. His mouth presses against her collarbone, just where it peeks above the frayed neckline of her sweater. Her eyelids slide shut. He radiates heat. He sighs against her shoulder, and the sound is filled with earnest relief. 

Even though they both smell like stale sweat and dirt, under James’ mouth and hands, she feels strong and sleek. She is the Widow who let the Winter Soldier into her bed, and this isn’t a beginning, but the continuation of something that began long ago.

A rush of feeling flutters up from her heart and sticks in her throat. She clenches her jaw and her fists. She won’t cry. His lips press against hers and she swallows her tears. She focuses on this, now – the firm, insistent sweep of James’ hands, his tongue in her mouth, the way he lifts her knee over his hip. His face is illuminated in flickering light - blue eyes and dark hair, the curve of his lips - and it's _familiar_. For the first time in months, she feels herself come undone. She winds her arms around his neck and lets herself sink into the floor.

He is hard against her belly; one of his hands slides up her shirt, the other reaches for the button to her pants.

Natasha flinches and pushes back against his shoulders. She shakes her head. “Not without…”

James turns wordlessly, shoving a hand into his backpack and pulling out a string of foil wrappers. He grins.

A laugh rises in her chest. “Where did you get those?”

He shrugs a shoulder and bends down to kiss her. “Gas station.”

It has to have been months since they’d raided the abandoned gas station, stuffing their bags with cartons of crackers and preservative-filled pastries. James had shoved a can of WD-40 in each of his back pockets to keep his left arm from freezing up. That had been about survival. But these things that James had taken – that had been sheer optimism, a kind of hope Natasha had cut loose long ago.

She lets herself kiss him back, without restraint. His hand shakes as he opens his jeans and rolls on a condom. Natasha kicks off her own jeans, wraps her legs around his hips, and then he’s inside her, moving in long, deep strokes.

For a long time, Natasha remembers and forgets – forgets the crumbling world around them and remembers what it was like to be touched, to be normal, to be loved. The tips of his fingers press against her, and it hardly takes any friction to bring her off. She shudders apart in his arms; her toes curl at the small of his back. James follows soon after. It’s been too long for both of them.

He rolls off of her and onto his back. He situates the blankets around them and pulls her to his chest.

“Remember the first time I saw you,” he whispers. “Skinny and scared, but all lit up inside.”

Natasha purses her lips. “Don’t.”

His forehead creases. His thumb brushes along her cheekbone. “Spent enough time forgetting. Doesn’t matter what happens now, never gonna forget anything else. Especially not you.”

 

\--

 

They walk for a long year before they come across it: a formation of olive-green trucks barricading the road. They hear voices and take cover in the tree line. Natasha watches James’ face as he listens. She listens, too, but he hears something she doesn’t, and it makes him spring to his feet, grab her by the hand, and rush back onto the road. 

“James,” Natasha hisses urgently, tugging at his arm, but she can’t stop him. 

A mob of armed men, weighed down by protective gear, file out from behind the trucks. They shout and raise their weapons. James’ feet stick in the ground. Natasha can almost hear him thinking.

An endless, silent moment passes before Steve – _Steve_ – emerges from behind the row of men, shouting something Natasha can’t hear through the ringing in her ears. He rushes up and his arms wrap around James’ shoulders. He chants that old nickname – _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky_. James’ hand still grips hers.

Natasha thinks, as she watches them, that this isn’t real. She wonders if this is her dream or James’. But then Clint and Sam are behind Steve, and then Clint’s hands are stroking her matted hair and his forehead is pressed against hers. Behind him, she can see Sam grin and run a hand over his face. 

She can see that these men have lived a very different year. Their eyes are bright, their faces are clean-shaven, their flesh is still padded by fat and muscle. They haven’t seen the awful things on the road. She glances at James, and he is looking back at her. He sees the same.

As they accept the victorious embraces of their old friends, Natasha keeps a tight hold on his hand. They are home. They always have been.


End file.
